Music for Euronews

During the early 2000s, a young adult
of Swedish nationality, who we will refer to as Jöns, lived in the
Kavalírka section of Prague 5 in a fourth-floor apartment
which he shared with a low-level clerk in the Czech Ministry of
Energy and Raw Materials by the name of Milan Janatka. Over the
course of several Svijanys and an impressive slab of nakládaný
hermelin in a halfheartedly western-themed Smichov herna
bar, Mr Janatka, a gregarious bachelor now in his mid 50s, revealed
to us much of what we know about his former housemate. Jöns had come
to the Czech Republic to study at Charles University with the Erasmus
program and stayed when the term finished, to remain near a
university colleague with whom he had become romantically involved.
This situation, however, did not prove long-lasting, and when she,
without telling him beforehand, relocated to Ostrava for a
bookkeeping apprenticeship at a reputable wellness concern, he
informed his few acquaintances that he would shortly be returning to
his family's farmhouse in the vicinity of Gothenburg, but ultimately,
repatriation did not occur until several years later. In fact, it
would seem that even significantly less-ambitious journeys were to be
avoided by the young Swede and, according to information provided by
Mr Janatka, he would often not leave the accommodation more than once
every two or three days to purchase jars of Uncle Ben's Sweet and
Sour Sauce, egg-based fusilli and a copy of the tabloid Blesk
from the potraviny at the ground floor of their apartment
block, or, less frequently still, to venture a few blocks further to
the imposing, blue, 7-story post office building on Plzeňská,
where he would, through much effort and negotiation, manage the
dispatch of small parcels wrapped in lurid newsprint.

Česká Pošta Plzeňská

Without employment, friends or a home
internet connection, Jöns primarily occupied his existence by
watching staticky terrestrial broadcasts on a small television which
belonged to Mr Janatka. His command of the notoriously-difficult
Czech language was very remedial, so this was a largely an input of
visual stimuli. Jöns
would check the TV listings in Blesk and looked forward to
when the public stations would rebroadcast programmes made before
1989, which they often presented as a kind of historical
documentation. Through the banal expositions of life under
Normalization and interviews with solid-looking people that he
couldn't understand, he became entranced by the
glowing, evolving beiges and grays on the screen.
Occasionally, he would tune in to the American action movies which
were shown with Czech subtitles. His English was very good, and while
the films were not to his taste, it was satisfying to receive a
communication that he could understand. And of course there was the
English-language Euronews broadcast, weekdays from
11:25-12:05, on ČT2. The Euronews 2/3 hour would be
his firmest connection to the rest of the world (or Europe, anyway)
during this period.

Euronews was initially conceived in the
aftermath of the First Persian Gulf War as EU leaders came to realize
the enormity of power wielded by American rolling news channels such
as CNN. The aim was to offer a European alternative. It was to
be “European” in terms of content and perspective, but also in a
way that would eschew the bias of slick “Hollywood” personalities
for a more serious, technocratic approach. Until very recently, there
were no on-screen presenters, as reports were narrated by a neutral
voice-over, and much of the programming went further than that,
reducing the content to montages of press photographs or on-screen
diagrams and text accompanied by the mid-tempo, flamenco-spiked
MIDI-classical muzak which in the first few years of the 21st century
was commonly referred to as Chill-Out Music. Additionally, the
broadcasts would typically include a segment of far-flung local
events listings informing, for example, madrileños of
upcoming openings at art galleries in Krakow as well as jazz events
in and around Thessaloniki.

As Jöns grew increasingly dependent on
the comfort provided by Euronews, he sought to develop this
relationship into something more reciprocal. He wrote letters to the
news editor commenting on the presented topics and occasionally
offering polite constructive criticism for how some of the segments
might be improved. The correspondence was one-sided, but this did not
dissuade him. In fact, he soon widened the scope of his unsolicited
contributions to the organization.

The previous occupant of his room in
the shared apartment, a now-married friend of Mr Janatka, had been a
technician at the Radio Free Europe studio in the former
Czechoslovakian parliament building on Wilsonova, and had
pilfered several complicated units of sound producing machinery, only
to then leave them behind in the excitement of impending domestic
partnership, with vague promises to the clerk regarding the eventual
collection of said devices. Jöns had something of a background in
music and, like many Swedes, had been a member of a choir in his
childhood. Partially as a way to fill the regular interminable
stretches during which Euronews was not broadcast, he began to
produce musical “content” for Euronews – instrumental
music that could play in the background of a news report, montage or
infotainment feature. Each piece was given a title which corresponded
to a potential future news topic that Euronews might cover. In
the case that the event described in the title occurred, Euronews
would have an appropriate score on hand ready to insert into
broadcast, or so he probably envisaged. When enough music to fill a
cassette had been recorded, they were wrapped in Blesk and
sent to the public address of the Euronews organization in
Lyon.

Needless to say, there isn't evidence
that any piece of music written by Jöns made it beyond the mail
room. No person currently employed by Euronews that we've
spoken with has had any knowledge of (or apparent interest in) the
Music for Euronews recordings. The tapes came to the STR
through the largesse of a well-known collector of European television
ephemera.

Jöns finally returned to Sweden in
Fall 2005, at which point the unsolicited contributions to Euronews
ceased. It seems that after this time he generated no further
musical output, though some time later he took over the back-office
functions of a Burzum tribute act whose corporate event
schedule had become unmanageable. Today he is the owner of several
rental properties in Sweden and abroad, and is said to be something
of a rising star in Sweden's right-wing political blogosphere.

The Strategic Tape Reserve, headquartered in Cologne, West Germany, is a fully independent (non-aligned, secular) organization dedicated to the dissemination and responsible management of ferric cassette material and content.